9. Jamison
CHAPTER NINE
JAMISON
The problem with men who betrayed me was that they always thought betrayal made them interesting. It didn’t. It made them late to understanding exactly which line they had crossed and who was waiting on the other side of it.
By ten that morning, I had five dead accounts, a missing finance handler, two nervous investors threatening to pull from the west casino floor, and a dockmaster in South Harlan pretending he hadn’t sold Crow access codes to a rival syndicate.
By ten fifteen, I was in a murderous mood.
By ten thirty, I had stopped pretending this was business.
This was disrespect.
And disrespect required a different language.
I stood in the lower operations room beneath the new casino with a cigarette burning between my fingers and seven screens lit up in front of me.
The west casino ran above us, pretty with polished private tables for idiots. Down here, the building showed its bones. Security feeds. Encrypted calls. Route maps. Asset movement. Cash flow. Men with guns at the doors. Who didn’t see me as dynasty heir.
Good.
I wasn’t in the mood to be anybody’s heir.
I had not slept properly since, Damius visit.
So no.
I did not have patience today.
A man on the nearest screen was lying to me.
I knew before he opened his mouth.
Men lied with their shoulders first. Their mouths only caught up when they realized silence wouldn’t save them.
Gideon a dockmaster of South Harlan’s private corridor six, sat in a cheap chair in one of my warehouse offices with two Crow men behind him.
He was fifty, married to a woman who liked emerald necklaces, father to three sons at private schools paid for through access fees he had apparently decided were not generous enough.
“Mr. Crow,” he said, voice breaking around my name, “I swear to you, I didn’t know the codes were active.”
I stared at him through the screen.
Beside me, Reeves shifted his weight.
Reeves was my second. Tall, blond, dead behind the eyes in the useful way. He knew better than to speak when I was quiet.
Gideon didn’t.
“I thought they were old clearance strings,” he rushed on. “Legacy codes. I gave them to Marrow as proof I had access, but I didn’t think—”
“You didn’t think,” I repeated.
The room went colder.
Gideon swallowed hard. “No, sir.”
“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”
On another screen, footage played on repeat from three nights ago.
A service entrance at the burned Crow hotel.
Men in grey coveralls using a valid access code. A fire suppressant system delayed by six minutes. That was long enough to burn a wing.
Long enough to make investors nervous.
Six fucking minutes was all it took to make Damius crawl out of Villain and into my fucking house.
I took a drag of my cigarette until the need to break something passed.
“Do you know what six minutes cost me, Gideon?”
His lips parted.
Smart enough this time not to answer.
I nodded once at Reeves.
Reeves tapped a command on the tablet.
The screen beside Gideon changed.
A detailed list of everything he loved.
“That’s what I’m taking first.”
“No,” he breathed. “Please. Mr. Crow, my family—”
“Your family spent Crow money.”
“They didn’t know.”
I leaned closer to the screen. “You sold access to Marrow.”
“I didn’t know it was Marrow.”
“Don’t insult me while you’re bleeding, Gideon.”
Marrow Syndicate had been trying to get a claw into Harlan for nine months.
Not enough to declare war. But enough to be annoying.
Skimming couriers. Buying drunk guards. Whispering to investors who liked the idea of Crow weakness until Crow men appeared at their doors and reminded them weakness was a matter of perspective.
But burning my hotel?
That was a stupid message.
Marrow thought they had hit infrastructure.
They had hit pride.
That was worse for them.
“We also found a secondary ledger.” Reeves spoke quietly. His expression did not change, which meant I was not going to like the next sentence.
“Gideon wasn’t paid directly by Marrow. Payment came through a shell attached to Harrington nightlife holdings.”
My fingers tightened around the cigarette.
Harrington, was a city of nightlife. Men in expensive suits pretending old money made them untouchable.
I looked back at Gideon.
He had started crying.
“You let Harrington money into my docks,” I said.
“I didn’t know,” he sobbed. “I swear, I didn’t know.”
I smiled.
Every man in the room went still.
Even Reeves.
“Then you are too stupid to own hands.”
Gideon stopped crying.
The silence after that was very clean.
I leaned back. “I want every Harrington shell pulled from Harlan by midnight. Bank accounts frozen. Property flags triggered. Gambling licenses challenged. Every club using their liquor routes gets a compliance visit from our friends in municipal review.”
Reeves nodded. “Done.”
“And Marrow?”
“Two known houses. One in low south, one river east.”
“Burn neither.”
Reeves glanced at me.
I tapped ash into the tray. “Fire is their language. I don’t repeat gutter dialects.”
His mouth twitched once. “What do you want?”
I looked at Gideon through the screen. Then at the hotel footage.
“Take every door they own.”
Reeves understood immediately. One of my guards near the back smiled faintly.
Gideon started begging again. I muted him. His mouth kept moving silently on the screen.
My phone buzzed on the table.
I ignored it.
It buzzed again.
Then again.
I picked it up, ready to throw it at a wall. Saw a message from Marcel.
Answer.
I didn’t.
A message came through immediately.
You have the benefit tonight. Do not miss it.
I laughed.
The Parkington benefit.
Some fucking thing with old families, and public speeches about restoring historical districts none of them gave a shit about unless there were voting rights attached.
I had also planned to ignore it.
Another message.
Emmie said Sienna will be there. Behave tonight.
Sienna had stopped giving me pieces of herself and I had no idea what to do with my hands now that she no longer reached for them.
I put the phone face down.
Reeves watched me carefully.
“Problem?”
“No.”
That was a lie.
Everything was a problem.
Gideon was still silently begging on the screen. Harrington had touched my city. Marrow had burned my hotel.
And now I had to put on a tuxedo and attend some candlelit dynasty circle jerk so Harlan could see the Crow empire still standing.
I unmuted Gideon. His pleading filled the room mid-sentence.
“—please, Mr. Crow, I’ll fix it, I can fix it, I have names, I have proof, I—”
“Good,” I said.
He stopped.
“Give Reeves every name.”
“Yes. Yes, anything. I swear. All of it.”
“And if one detail is missing,” I said, voice calm, “I send your wife the ledger with your mistress’s name highlighted before I take the villa.”
His face went white.
Ah.
There it was.
Men could steal from me, sell codes, lie about fire, and weep over family. But threaten the secret that made them look pathetic to the people they needed to impress, and suddenly they understood stakes.
“You have twenty minutes,” I said.
I ended the call.
The screen went black.
I turned to the route map. “Lock down corridor six.”
Reeves nodded at one of the men.
“Move Crow freight through corridor two under medical classification until the audit clears. Triple the escort on west river shipments. Every driver gets a second tail. Anyone complains, fire them. Anyone asks why, fire them and then find out who they talked to first.”
“Done.”
“Put eyes on Harrington clubs in Harlan.”
“How many?”
“All of them.”
Reeves nodded.
“And send flowers to Gideon’s wife.”
That made him look at me.
“Flowers?”
“White lilies.”
His expression sharpened. “Funeral flowers.”
I smiled without humour. “She’ll understand before he does.”
Reeves gave a short nod and typed it in.
Harlan tightened under my hands, with each error I corrected.
This was the part of me that worked.
I never got the dynasty heir role right.
This, the king beneath the casino. Syndicate work was cleaner than family. In my world, violence was violence.
By three, the first Harrington shell had frozen.
By four, Marrow’s river east house had no doors.
By four fifteen, our missing finance handler turned up at a private clinic with two broken ribs, no shoes, and enough fear to start talking before Reeves put the phone to his ear.
By five, I knew the fire had been planned in three parts.
Marrow lit the match.
Harrington paid for the access.
Someone inside Harlan society had chosen the date. That was the part that didn’t go well. Because it meant this wasn’t just syndicate noise.
One of the families smiling at me under chandeliers had helped decide when my hotel should burn. Worse, they had done it on a night Sienna was supposed to be beside me.
The thought lodged under my ribs.
If she had come, she would have been in the hotel.
Waiting somewhere too close to the west wing while men used stolen codes and delayed fire systems. To burn my fucking hotel.
My grip tightened around the edge of the table.
Reeves stopped talking.
“What?” he asked quietly.
I looked at the event timeline on screen. Birthday launch. West wing fire. Sienna absent. She had given me the gift of not dealing with her. And that kept her out of a burning building.
I stepped back from the table.
“Find who chose the date.”
“We will.”
“No,” I said. “You will find them before I leave that benefit tonight, or I start assuming everyone in this room is too comfortable.”
The men understood. Comfort was dangerous in my rooms.
Reeves nodded once. “I’ll have names.”
“Good.”
My phone buzzed again.
Marcel.
Car in thirty. Wear a tux. Try not to arrive covered in blood.
I looked down at my hand.
Blood. From whatever idiot I had dealt with.
I stood there for another moment, breathing through the kind of rage that had nowhere elegant to go.
Then I walked out of the operations room.
My men parted around me.
Upstairs, the casino gleamed.
The private floors were already alive with evening money. Men laughing too loudly because they thought expensive sins made them powerful.